Grave Visits
by DarkBeta
Summary: He believed in anything. She believed in everything.


I've made the usual libations, but I'm not really worried. These days, a graveyard is the last place you should fear ghosts. Nobody lives inside of a day's journey of this place and many of the markers are fallen, but at least the people buried here had markers, and mourners, and names. They're the lucky ones, and they know it.

So many bones are out there, nameless. That's my job. FBE, Federal Bureau of Exorcism. I find the dead, and mourn them and bury them, so they won't trouble us the way they troubled the enemy.

You have to admit, it wasn't one of your smarter military maneuvres. Killing off nine-tenths of us so slowly we'd know ourselves betrayed, unshriven, unquiet. The enemy didn't even try to bind our ghosts. They left themselves totally vulnerable.

Everybody says what a tragedy it is that the two heroes died before the war was over. Every year there are summonings and divinations, trying to bring them back or find the plane of their existence.

It's a show of gratitude, supposedly. Nobody mentions the mana those two would carry, the power that would be drawn to anyone who channels them. I guess the reasons don't matter. There's never been any trace of them.

These days they'd be such misfits, though. They were so superstitious. Logic, cause and effect, conservation of mass, all that sort of nonsense. Maybe he did better than she did, but still!

No, the one I'm sorry about is her sister, Melissa. Now there's somebody who understood how the world works! If she hadn't been killed, I reckon the war would have been over a good three to five years sooner.

This place is on my beat, so sometimes I stop by to leave her some flowers and good wishes. She's quiet, but she's hanging around. You need a sense for that sort of thing in the FBE. I heard her laughing once. Not a mean laugh (not like some of them), but a kind of giggle like a kid with a secret.

Okay, so the ghosts alone couldn't have swung it. Most of the other Folk were living pretty much on the margin by then. (Although, who knew there was a Dragon King's palace in San Francisco Bay? Only reason the City's still there. Unlike, say, D.C. Which is rubble in a frozen swamp.)

Once Gaea took a hand though, it was all over but the shouting. You don't mess with Mother Nature. Got so you had to check with the soothsayers before every guerilla raid, just to avoid the tornados or the tsunamis or the earthquakes or the blizzards.

Mama had one kid who ran away and left her when she had some trouble. The second kid stuck around. So maybe we didn't have much choice about it. When push came to shove, Mama showed she liked us best.

So now we've got glaciers. That's okay. It's only a little ice age. We'll all be thawed out in a couple centuries. My karma's about average, so I'll be working things out for at least that long. Hey, Melissa, look me up when it gets warm again, and we'll have a picnic.

Guess that's all for now. Got to get back to work. May your paths be clear, everyone.

--

The FBE man had left his mount tethered outside the graveyard. He swung into the saddle and urged it along the remnant of a road. Its broad wings unfurled. Within four strides it was airborn.

From a burrow among the graves, gleaming eyes watched him go. The pegasus was well out of sight, and the startled birds had begun to sing again, before the dog fox slunk from his den. He sampled the air, and checked vantage points to be sure no enemy overlooked his territory. At last he yipped enticingly.

The little red vixen left her burrow as warily as he had, but neither wolves nor men were near. They chased each other through the gravestones, springing from ambush and dashing away, but the vixen was heavy with cubs. The sun had warmed a fallen marker. She curled up on it, covering an inscription that started "Melissa Scully" and ended with "Beloved Sister".

The black dog-fox lay with his head resting on her back, but his eyes were open and his ears flicked as he guarded her sleep. The ghost's giggle merited only one more ear flick, and a yawn that looked like a grin.

(Author's note: An early work. I'm brazenly unashamed of Mulder's trite reincarnation. The pegasus though, does make me blush.)


End file.
